Steven Vallentyne Adams

Art form: Blown glass

Best known for: High-quality sculptural bowls, goblets and candleholders.

Major influence: Venetian glass master Lino Tagliapietra. “Lino brought the very refined, Italian techniques to the studio glass movement. He single-handedly is responsible for teaching American artists how to really blow glass.”

When did you start working with glass? “The first glass I played with was in college as a ceramics student almost 40 years ago. I was melting marbles and making lakes in the bottom of some of the pieces I was throwing.

“Little by little, that led to setting up a glass melting furnace and teaching myself to blow glass and following that path forward.”

Talk about your ‘Valentine’ paperweights: “My mother’s maiden name was Vallentyne, which is also my middle name and the end of that clan. As a kid, I was embarrassed by the name and frequently teased for it. As an adult I have used it for inspiration in making special pieces for Valentine’s Day.

“Always searching for something sellable to make, this series of paperweights has developed around Valentine’s Day.

“This year, as my blowing career seems to be coming closer to its conclusion, the pieces have become a bit more complex with the inclusion of two hearts spiraling around each other surrounded with ribbons of dichroic glass.”

Process: The paperweight is formed from the inside out.

Adams gathers a ball of clear molten glass on a stainless steel blowpipe from the melting furnace and begins to shape it using only a few simple hand tools.

Once that initial shape is made, he picks up a pair of dichroic glass strips that have been heated on a hot place. The dichroic strips are worked into the glass that is folded over on itself several times.

Dichroic glass, reflecting one color and transmitting another, has a similar iridescent quality as fire opal or dragonfly wings.

The glass ball is reheated and another pair of dichroic strips are added and twisted, forming the core of the paperweight.

Adams then adds the hearts to that core by applying small dots of red glass that are heated and shaped with a special tool. Two more gathers of glass are layered over that and it is worked into its final shape.

The process of reheating and shaping is repeated as many as 50 times over the course of an hour.

What motivates you? “What pulls me forward each day is the work and the desire to learn and improve – to make each piece better than the last and to spend as much time as possible in that zone.

“The current project is what is important or the wondering where the next work will come from.”